Volume 42, Issue 5 (September 1997)

Review of: Levy H “And The Blood Cried out. A Prosecutor's Spell-binding Account of the Power of DNA”

Rarely, does a technically accurate work provide a concise (223 page) yet intriguing narrative. Harlan Levy's straightforward account of the introduction of DNA technology into the criminal justice system makes for easy and informative reading. The hard-bound, well-edited, carefully-referenced edition should be a required textbook for students of the law and forensic sciences, but it may well be consumed by those who find pleasure in detective stories. The book has ten chapters that provide details of some very famous and infamous legal cases that arose during the first “DNA decade”. These narratives were selected because defendants were found guilty or innocent on the bases of (or despite) VNTR and/or PCR matching of DNA contained in blood or semen evidence to DNA of the blood of suspects.